The Concert Hall
Saturday, September 18, 2021
THE PROGRAM
G. F. Handel, What Passion cannot music raise and quell
J. S. Bach, Concerto for violin & strings in E major
M. Haydn, Concerto for viola & harpsichord in C major
G. F. Handel, Gloria for soprano & strings
THE ARTISTS
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
Krista Bennion Feeney, violin
Chloe Fedor, Andrew Fouts, violin
Kyle Miller & Nikki Divall, viola
Loretta O’Sullivan, cello
Anne Trout, bass
Andrew Appel, harpsichord
I would like to debunk one dull and worn-out concept immediately. For generations, we have read of Handel’s recycling of his works and stealing many works of other composers. This compositional “method” has been used as a weapon against him while assessing his genius. In making disparaging observations critics and historians have been referring to his early works written in Italy. Arias and duets from Roman cantatas turned into chorus in English oratorios. There are also youthful instrumental works that were dismantled and repositioned in concertos and mature sonatas. Most remarkably, one movement from a solo violin sonata was expanded and rebuilt as a thrilling chorus with orchestra.
Intelligent observation of each borrowing makes clear that his early works go through a metamorphosis that so changes the intention and effect of the music that we cannot accuse Handel of lazy or irresponsible workmanship. To return to the material of a chamber duo with a light, pastoral text (No, di voi non vo’ fidarmi) –No, I don’t want to trust you) and recreate it to express an overwhelming joy at the birth of a savior (For unto us a child is born) requires that we move away from condemnation towards astonishment and respect. (click the highlighted works to listen to Handel's brilliant recomposing of his own works.)
When Handel returns to earlier material he does so to create something new and different. When we listen to a grand chorus with its origins in an intimate violin sonata, the context has changed. With the magic of an alchemist, the once pretty domestic work has been transformed into a final climactic moment of a grand motet in a monumental oratorio. Handel sees his work as part of a lifelong sketchbook. A graceful drawing from his Italian repertory can be elevated into a panoramic history painting.
Bach’s attitude towards his storehouse of previous work is similar. As his own children became impressive harpsichordists, Bach returned to his concertos for violin, or oboe, or other combinations of instruments to give us a collection of concertos for one, two, three, and four harpsichords. All evidence shows that in this retooling, he altered the figuration and the tonalities to turn an ideal violin work, one that highlights the idiomatic beauties of the fiddle, into a keyboard showpiece. It is also germane to point out that his concerto for four harpsichords is a work by Vivaldi. The list goes on. Playing with ideas could be a building tool for what was seen as an enlightened future.
I remember arriving in the north German city of Bremen at 3:30 pm on a December day. I was paying a visit to the great harpsichord builder Martin Skowronek. Leaving the train station and hearing the sounds of ancient church bells, I was aware that the sun was in its last moments of setting and that darkness was enveloping the city. It was shocking for a visitor from Paris where the sun set much later in the day. There was a sadness that overwhelmed me. I was unprepared for the night to overtake us. Is it this untimely darkness that inspired German art to be so different from French and Italian work? There is in the colors and shapes, the faces and bodies of Italian Venuses and French saints a grace and joyfulness, an idealization and smooth beauty. This art is sunlit. But look to the details of a German sculpted face on the doorway of a cathedral or the image from a painting by Cranach: furrowed brows, wrinkles, the character made of imperfections.
It is no wonder that Handel, after beginning his career in Hamburg, escaped to the radiance of Roman sunshine and the vitality of Venetian and Florentine art and music. Handel’s Gloria with its sparkle and extroverted expression of joy could not find its genesis in Lubeck or Dresden. Handel’s genius at creating music of endless beauty, as in our selection from St. Cecilia Ode (What Passion cannot Music raise and quell) was born of Roman sunshine and not of early sunsets.
It is no wonder that Bach’s compositions were fundamentally changed when he became aware and familiar with the concertos of Vivaldi, published in Amsterdam and performed under his supervision in Weimar. The clarity, harmonic direction, clear musical structures, the musical imagination of modern Venetian music tempered Bach’s meticulous traditional organist’s language. The concertos of Bach are the German’s inspired response to the contrasting language of contemporary Italian opera and the concerto.
Bach was the supreme master of counterpoint and the Renaissance skills of fine composition as he inherited them from his German ancestry. Handel was a profound master of expression, motivation, and of personality, as were the sculptors of the statues on the façade of the Strasburg cathedral.
But Handel’s relentless beauty and Bach’s ability to fascinate, beguile and move us was possible because they fused the melancholy and contemplation of northern dusk with the warmth and life force of the southern day.
Like Mozart, Michael Haydn had a gift for lyrical melody and graceful phrases. He was able to turn two instruments in duet into a pair of lovers, singing amorous melodies and interacting with each other as if on the stage, acting out a moment of sheer attraction and affection. And both composers were capable of play, of unfettered happiness in music.
Yet, Salzburg was not a particularly happy place for either of these men. For Mozart, his professional circumstances and the humiliations he suffered from the archbishop were more than enough to see him flee the town and find a right fit in the crowded and cosmopolitan city of Vienna. For Michael Haydn, we know he had a very serious drinking problem which Mozart documents for us in his letters. But Mozart also makes clear how much he admired and loved the music of his older colleague and neighbor.
Though the 19th century did not see many concertos for multiple instruments (it is the century of the virtuoso solo concerto), this duo concerto was a valued and common format for the 18th-century composer, from Vivaldi through Mozart (harp and flute) and Beethoven (violin, cello, and piano). There is so much pleasure in both playing and listening to Haydn’s concerto for viola and keyboard. We wonder how much inspiration for delight came from living in a city that was and is as beautiful as a dream surrounded by mountains that cradle us in the sublime.
Andrew Appel
Hillsdale NY
September 6, 2021